mitt romney is getting ready for the next session, next debate, hoping his mum carries over next week. >> john harwood is cnbc's chief washington correspondent. thanks for being here. i don't know if it's possible to strip politics away from these new unemployment numbers, but if you can, explain, does the president get credit for these numbers coming down, and how real are they? >> well, the president gets credit or blame for whatever the economic conditions are on his watch. these are numbers that are better than they've been, but they're still not good numbers. 7.8% is a high unemployment rate. we've got an economy that's not growing very fast. but it's certainly good news for the president to be able to say that 7.8%, the rate when i took office, we're back down there agn. but i think people make too much political impact of these jobs numbers, because they don't need a government statistic to tell them how they feel about it. >> but then you have somebody influential like jack welch who tweets something suggesting these numbers are cooked. every expert seems to suggest that would